First four out the door

Earliest Marian graduates reflect on high school's role in the '60s, '70s

Earliest Marian graduates reflect on high school's role in the '60s, '70s

July 08, 2008|JENNIFER OCHSTEIN Tribune Correspondent

For high schoolers living through the turbulent 1960s, the brand-new Marian High School offered a refuge. At least that's how some of the students, who graduated from 1968 through 1971 saw it. "Our parents wanted a stable learning environment for us," said Kathryn Gregorits Bregman, who helped organize and attended a class reunion for Marian High School's first four graduating classes. Members of 1968, 1969, 1970 and 1971 classes met for a reunion at Juday Creek Golf Course club house recently. Marian offered a safe place for the 200 students who attended despite social unrest, said Gregorits Bregman, who graduated in 1968. She now lives in Manhattan in New York, but she can never forget her days or the friends she made at Marian, she said. Maryclare Cressy Dunbar, who graduated in 1971 and lives in Mishawaka, feels the same. She is in a pack of eight women who graduated from Marian. "We've been together ever since," she said. They meet at least once per month and go on trips together. Some of them have even known each other since the first grade. "It's been a family," she added. "We went through a lot of turmoil together. Most of us grew up with nuns and priests even in grade school, so when the '60s happened we started feeling the effects because we had a lot of informed young teachers." Despite it being a safe haven, Marian was a microcosm, Cressy Dunbar said, of what was going on in the country regarding equal rights and other social issues. She herself decided to join a newly formed club called the Equal Rights Club. A cheerleader from a conservative family, she even joined an antiwar drama production called "Bury the Dead" by Irwin Shaw and through that got to know the school's hippies. She even dated one of them for three years after that. "It was a very special time," she said and gratifying to see everyone from then come back together to reminisce. Indeed, Raphael Stokes, who graduated in 1969 and lives in South Bend, sees the school as one that is more closely knit than public school. He transferred from Riley High School to Marian in the middle of his freshman year. "At the time there was only one other black student in the school," besides himself, Stokes said. At first perhaps a bit uncomfortable at the school, Stokes said that by his sophomore and junior years at Marian he had acclimated and was comfortable there. "I liked it," he said. "It taught me a lot about dealing with people because after high school I was placed in a lot of positions in college and in my job where I was the only black person, and I felt perfectly comfortable." He also said he believes his presence at Marian helped open some of the students' eyes to issues related to race because many of them had not had much contact with blacks before then. He, too, saw Marian as a microcosm of life outside its walls. Despite being one of only a handful of blacks at the school at the time, Stokes said he liked the diversity at the school in terms of students from working-class families, those who were from middle-class families and those who were from well-to-do families. From a middle-class family himself, Stokes said he learned to mix with people from all types of backgrounds. And like Stokes, Cressy Dunbar and Gregorits Bregman, Diane Mestach Hemphill, who graduated in 1970, said it's always fun to get together with former classmates. "It brings you back in time," she said. "Everyone goes their separate ways and when you come back, suddenly you're a kid again."